Some good news in on child well-being, but work remains (YDR opinion)

The well-being of children in the state is assessed by this year's KidsCount report. (File)

There was some good news in the figures and analysis contained in the KidsCount Data Book, a sort of state of our children report compiled annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

And there was bad news, indications that as much as conditions for Pennsylvania's — and York County's — children have improved, we still have a long way to go.

The commonwealth ranked 16th in the country in the most recent ranking. The good news? That's up one spot from the previous year. The bad news? It's still behind its rank from 2012, when Pennsylvania ranked 14th in terms of child well-being.

More good news? The state was below the national average for the percentage of children living in poverty.

The bad news?

Twenty-percent of the state's children were living in poverty in 2012, the last year figures were available, and 33 percent have parents who lack secure employment.

In York County, the news was also mostly bad, with 15.8 percent of the county's children living in poverty, up from 10.2 percent in 2008.

That, of course, is a symptom that the economy still hasn't recovered, at least for working people, since 2008's catastrophe. Jobs may be coming back, but they aren't the kind of the jobs that pay a wage sufficient to support a family.

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In education, there was also good news. Pennsylvania ranked seventh in education. More kids have access to quality pre-school. More fourth-graders are proficient readers and more eighth-graders are proficient in math.

And there was bad news. Sixty percent of fourth graders are not proficient in reading and 58 percent of eighth graders are not proficient in math.

Those numbers are pretty dismal and an indication that our schools — and the nation's schools — have a lot of work ahead of them. Here in Pennsylvania, it means more fully funding public schools, which can happen once the state Legislature figures out a means to bring the taxation system into the 21st century.

Health care for children increased in several categories in the state. Still, Pennsylvania ranked 25th in health care. The number of low-birthweight children dropped in the state and in York County, where it was at the lowest level in five years. The percentage of children without health insurance steadily dropped, both in the state and in York County. Only 3.9 percent of York County's children were without health insurance in 2010-12.

That's not bad.

But the fact that Pennsylvania ranked 25th in the country, despite improvements, demonstrates that more needs to be done, whether it's expanding the hugely successful CHIP program or accepting the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid, which Gov. Tom Corbett has declined to do, largely for political reasons.

Concluding on a positive note, the state showed improvement in what are called family and community indicators. Teen births have declined, both in the state and in the county. In York County, teen pregnancy, for years, was considered a huge issue. Efforts by the Teen Pregnancy Coalition of York County appear to be working well. Births to teen parents are down from 549 in 2007 to 400 in 2011.

That's good news.

But it's still too many.

And an indication that our work in this area, like the others measured by the report, is far from done.